Coronal hole faces Earth

Saturday, 21 October 2017 08:57 UTC

Coronal hole faces Earth

A large southern extension of the northern hemisphere polar coronal hole is facing Earth today.

An enhanced solar wind stream flowing from this coronal hole could arrive in about 3 days from now and minor to moderate G1/G2 geomagnetic storm conditions are likely on Tuesday, 24 October.

This coronal hole is a familiar solar feature that has been around for months now. The solar wind stream caused moderate G2 geomagnetic storm conditions on 27 September and strong G3 geomagnetic storm conditions on 28 September.

The coronal hole did shrink in size compared to the previous rotation so we do not expect the same kind of storm conditions this time around but we should still see a decent solar wind enhancement at our planet when the solar wind stream arrives.

Any mentioned solar flare in this article has a scaling factor applied by the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), the reported solar flares are 42% smaller than for the science quality data. The scaling factor has been removed from our archived solar flare data to reflect the true physical units.

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